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I'm currently working on a story to read at Tight Lip on the 19th.  As background I flicked through Pierre Bayard's fantastic text How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read.  It's as good as I remember, and this time I decided to follow-up one its references, Shakespeare in the Bush.  This essay describes Laura Bohannan's disastrous attempt to tell the story of Hamlet to a tribe she was studying.

Bohannon starts out convinced that human nature is similar enough around the world that the  great tragedies should be possible for anyone to follow.  This doesn't turn out to be the case:

"The old man made soothing noises and himself poured me some more beer. 
"You tell the story well, and we are listening.  But it is clear that
the elders of your country have never told you what the story really
means.  No, don't interrupt!  We believe you when you say your marriage
customs are different, or your clothes and weapons.  but people are the
same everywhere; therefore, there are always witches and it is we, the
elders, who know how witches work."

The essay, with it's improvised retelling of Hamlet, is very funny while raising some fascinating questions.

After eliminating several thousand lines of notes I'm now sorting out my almost-finished and barely-started short stories.  A week or so back I had about 70 fragments and I've been working through these, either finishing or deleting them.  So far I've eliminated about 15 stories but I've also turned up some lovely pieces.  Some of these fragments are over 5 years old and the need to make decisions has forced me to rethink them. 

One of the downsides of cheap electronic storage is that everything can be kept rather than what is most useful.  Over time this can become overwhelming.  Any idea that's truly good will be memorable whether or not it's stored on a disk.

In between this, I've been practising reading 'A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand' in preparation for tonight's performance at Sparks.  I'm very excited to see how this works out, and can't wait to see the photograph that's been commissioned to illustrate the story.

For years I've kept a computer file with notes for writing.  It contained brief story descriptions, character sketches and interesting lines, some salvaged from failed stories.  The file grew to a few thousand lines, with some entries that were years old.

As part of my general decluttering I've now eliminated the file.  I've taken out the ideas that suggest viable stories, moved some notes into works-in-progress and the rest are gone.  I think that having the file was more of a distraction than an aid.  Sometimes things were written in the file rather than take the time to write a fast draft and ended up never being written; other times I wrote things in the file rather than consider them properly at the time.

I'm very excited.  I now have a set of short stories that are no longer hidden amongst weeds and rubbish.  Over the next few weeks I'll see which ones grow into something interesting.  Clutter is never good.

I'm reading at Jo Horsman's next Sparks night, on December 9th at the Three and Ten in Brighton.  I'm very excited, as I'm reading alongside some very interesting people.  The line-up features Vanessa Gebbie, Jenn Ashworth, Kuzhali Manickavel, Pam Hewitt and Jacqueline Cattaneo.  I'm going to be reading a story called 'A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand'.  Tickets are £5.